


Hold my Hand and Feed Me Soup

by SassyStarboard



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Adorable Stiles Stilinski, Blankets, Derek Hale Takes Care of Stiles Stilinski, Derek Hale is Not a Failwolf, Derek Hale is a Softie, Fluff, M/M, Mentioned Scott McCall (Teen Wolf), Sick Stiles Stilinski, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:07:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28842864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SassyStarboard/pseuds/SassyStarboard
Summary: Stiles has dragged Scott into the woods in the middle of the night way too many times to count. It figures that the one time it happens the other way around, Stiles gets sick. Luckily, Derek shows up to bring him food.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 12
Kudos: 230





	Hold my Hand and Feed Me Soup

**Author's Note:**

> In honor of the increasingly cold weather here in the US and my love of Sterek taking care of each other. Enjoy! Lmk what you think!

Thin rays of bright gold sunlight streamed into the living room, peaceful and soft. A gentle breeze was blowing outside, noises of the settling house combining with the sound of trees rustling in the wind.

Everything was terrible.

“ _ Fuck _ .” Stiles groaned hoarsely. He rolled over, shoving a couch cushion over his face as the outside light caught him right in the eyes. 

Stiles didn’t know what time it was. He knew it was miserably bright outside, too bright for him to go back to sleep without getting up to close the blinds. It was Sunday, possibly, and most of Stiles was vaguely aware he was entering the third day of his illness. Scott had come by yesterday with a peace offering in the form of his mom’s double fudge brownies. Melissa’s brownies were absolute heaven, and the extra layer of Nutella certainly would have atoned for Scott’s crimes if Stiles hadn’t vomited it up two hours later.

_ Come check out the weird magic vibes I’m getting from the lake on the Preserve, Stiles. _ Scott had said.  _ Come fuck around in this lake with me in the middle of winter. Oh, I forgot to mention, I know you didn’t bring a jacket but you don’t have a problem with being almost drowned by kelpies, do you? No? Great! _

Pouting, Stiles sneezed bitterly into the couch cushions. If Stiles had to name the one thing he hated most about being the token human, it was his easily-defeated immune system. That, and constantly being underestimated by every single living thing that passed through Beacon Hills—the territory had been theirs for nearly a decade now but no one ever seemed to get the message.

The immune system thing though. That sucked major ass.

Fifteen minutes later, Stiles was in the midst of an industrious mental attempt to summon the TV remote using The Force when the doorbell rang. Briefly, Stiles made an effort to open the door using his yet-to-be unlocked Jedi mind powers, but to no avail. Alas, Stiles was no Jedi. Stiles was an Emissary who had yet to discover any sort of rune diagram that supported out-of-sight metaphysical levitation decrees.

Stiles groaned loudly, slowly rising from his tomb of throw pillows and bath towels and fuzzy blankets like an undead Bed Bath and Beyond employee. His innermost blanket came with him when he stood up, the cheerful tassels of his snot-covered shawl dragging behind him while he trudged to the front door.

Opening the door with a smile was a rare occasion for him on most days. This day in particular, Stiles opened the door with a grimace, knowing he would be met with either a delivery man who couldn’t care less or someone who had seen him look far, far worse.

Unfortunately, Stiles opened the door to a third option—someone his big, fat, hopeless romantic of a brain had an equally hopeless crush on.

“Uh, hi?” Stiles squinted, still not totally sure what he was looking at. Despite his inner monologue lamenting the minuscule rays of hostile light from the living room window, the inside of the house had been absurdly dark. In comparison, the peeling white paint of the front porch was literally blinding.

Luckily for him, focusing on Derek’s solid black outfit balanced it out. 

Impossibly, Derek Hale was standing on Stiles’ front porch looking pained and awkward, clutching a grease-stained paper bag in one hand and a round Tupperware container in the other. Stiles blinked slowly, his brain taking great pains to process what was happening.

“Here.” Derek thrusted his packages into Stiles’ arms, then immediately turned around and stepped off the porch as if he was planning to make a quick getaway by sprinting into the woods. 

“Hey, wh—wait!” Stiles managed, stumbling forward out into the blinding sunlight. Derek, by some miracle, stopped. Stiles clumsily stepped off the porch, feeling the grass against his bare feet for a split-second before tripping flat on his face trying to step over the tassels of his blanket shroud. Or, at least, he  _ would _ have fallen on his face if Derek hadn’t seen how pathetic he looked and doubled back to catch him.

“M’sorry.” Stiles groans, his head falling forward against Derek’s chest. Derek huffed, straightening Stiles out with one hand and pulling up the hem of the blanket with the other. Sensing Stiles was unstable, Derek took back what he’d brought, shoving loose blanket into Stiles’ arms in return.

“Scott—shit,” Derek grunted and grabbed Stiles by the shoulders, clearly intending to manhandle him back inside, “Scott said you were sick. At the pack meeting. You missed it last night.”

“So you came—you came over to—achkk—to torture me?” Stiles shoved his face into his blanket, his sentence cut off by his own hacking cough. It was the first full sentence he’d attempted to speak today. His throat couldn’t handle it. Derek rolled his eyes. His attitude did not improve as he turned Stiles around and pushed him back into his own house.

Stiles squirmed, whining in protest. “Dude, watch where you’re putting your—“

“I’m this close to carrying you like a sack of potatoes.” Derek warned, staring him down. Stiles eyed Derek warily, doubtful. Derek shrugged and bent down, preparing to lift with his knees. Stiles squawked and scrambled back.

“Whoa, hey, fine! I’m fine! Message received!” Stiles croaked out, though he was more disappointed than he cared to admit when Derek backed off. Stiles had refused solely to maintain the illusion of choice (and his final shred of dignity), but part of him had been hoping Derek would follow through on his threat. Still, Stiles begrudgingly allowed Derek to herd him through the front hall.

“Walk slower.” Stiles whined.

“Walk faster.” Derek suggested, shifting his other arm to adjust his grip on the containers.

“Be nice to me, asshole. I’m sick. And tired. And feverish.” Stiles said grumpily. His throat had grown used to speaking by now but his voice continued to come out thick and scratchy. He stepped carefully around the corners of the furniture, clutching the majority of his blanket into his chest to avoid another misstep.

“And a moron.” Derek added, pushing Stiles towards the living room couch. “You look like you got hit by a truck. Have you taken anything today?”

“No. Why? What’s in those?” Stiles asked, flopping down onto the couch and wrinkling his stuffed-up nose. “Drugs?”

Derek paused in the middle of rearranging Stiles’ blanket. His frown grew deeper as he set what he’d brought him down onto the living room coffee table. “You can’t smell it?”

“Can’t smell anything.” Stiles told him, his lower lip sticking out in a pout as he poked warily at the Tupperware. Whatever was inside it was a thick yellow, and Stiles was more than a little scared. 

“. . . it’s soup.” Derek admitted, his hand coming up to scratch the back of his neck. His head ducked down as he said it, the tips of his ears slowly burning into a flushing red.

“S’a bag of soup?” Stiles looked up at Derek with wide eyes. Derek gave him a dry look. Stiles snorted out a wet, congested laugh.

“Guess again.” Derek reached forward, pressing the back of his hand to Stiles’ sweaty forehead. Burning. Derek pried Stiles’ blanket off, willfully ignoring Stiles’ desperate protests. “Have you eaten today?”

“Fight me.” Stiles weakly bared his teeth, conjuring a feeble, pathetic sneer. But he had begun to curl in on himself like a feverish armadillo—the loss of the blanket was somehow better and worse at the same time—and his new position was greatly diminishing the effect of his death glare. Derek shot him another look. Stiles responded with a dramatic imitation of Derek’s roll.

“Should've guessed you being sick meant you would be a stubborn ass about taking care of yourself.” Derek said sternly, tossing the paper bag into Stiles’ lap a bit rougher than he needed to. Stiles stuck his tongue out at Derek, but opened the bag all the same.

“Oh, fuck.” Stiles pushed himself up, his pale, tired face splitting into an eager grin as he reached into the bag and pulled out a handful of curly fries. “God, yes. You’re best. You’re the best.  _ The best _ .” Stiles moaned, shoving an entire fistful of fries into his mouth.

“Where are your spoons?” Derek looked away—probably because Stiles was disgusting—and walked in the direction of the kitchen. “The soup is butternut squash.”

“ _ Fuck me. _ ” Stiles groaned into the bag of curly fries. “Dude, I feel so much better now. I can’t believe Derek Hale brought me soup. This is seriously unreal.”

Derek gave a low hum of acknowledgement, then set about opening all the kitchen drawers one-by-one in search of the silverware. At least, that’s what Stiles thought he was doing, because whatever was happening in there was making a  _ lot  _ of noise.

“Here.” Derek returned with a spoon, setting it beside the soup before sitting down on the opposite end of the couch.

“Me Caveman Derek. Me hunt and gather for healing vegetable.” Stiles grunted out, lowering the register of his voice. He holds it together for barely a second before he bursts out laughing.

“Potatoes aren’t a vegetable.” Derek said. Stiles shrugged, cramming another round of curly fries into his mouth.

“Squash is.”

“Squash is a fruit.”

“No it’s not.”

“Yes it is.”

“Caveman Derek act like big vegetable nerd.” Stiles threw one of his fries in Derek’s general direction. It bounced off the sleeve of Derek’s leather jacket, then rolled down into the crevasses of the couch. Derek picked it up with an expression of distaste and tossed it back at Stiles. It landed, of course, right back into the bag. Stiles scoffed. Then immediately cringed and reached forward for the box of tissues and blew his nose. Snot. Ugh.

“Why'd you come, anyway?” Stiles asked without thinking, then immediately course-corrected when he caught sight of Derek’s wounded expression. “No! Not what I meant! You’re awesome and you brought me soup and curly fries and I want you here! Don’t leave me! I just—I-I meant, you know, no one else came over besides Scott and Scott only came over to pay reparations because he’s the one who got me sick so he felt like—”

“ _ Scott _ got you sick?” Derek, who had recovered from Stiles’ slight, was understandably confused. “Werewolves don’t get sick.”

“Well, no, they do not.” Stiles said, sagging back into the couch with utter relief that he hadn’t driven Derek. “But they  _ do  _ drag their best friends out to investigate water-demons in freezing cold weather. Have you ever had a run-in with Kelpies, man? Because—” Stiles broke out into a series of painful coughs, turning his head and hacking in the opposite direction away from Derek. Derek reached forward but was waved off. Stiles reached down onto the floor for his water bottle and took a long drink before attempting to speak again. “‘Cause they are a  _ bitch _ to fight off. Seriously, my entrails were almost my out-trails. Anyway, we were out there for like way too many hours and I had to walk home soaking wet in below-freezing weather. Scott, of course, is fine. Asshole.”

“ _ What _ ?” Derek’s relatively-neutral expression twisted, stricken by their lack of self-preservation. Ugh, why did Derek's scolding expression have to be so cute? “Stiles, you should have called me. I thought maybe you caught something, I didn’t realize—”

“Oh, we caught something.” Stiles joked. Water demon? Fish catching? Get it?

“ _ Stiles _ .” Derek suddenly looked serious. Stiles sobered, confused. Derek went on. “You shouldn’t have done that. You and Scott shouldn’t be tackling nests of Kelpies on your own. It’s not safe. What if you had gotten seriously hurt?”

“It was just the one.” Stiles muttered into his fries, looking for all the world like a scolded child. “And it’s not like it was on purpose. We didn’t even think there was anything there, okay?”

“If you didn’t think there was anything there, why were you checking it out?” Derek sighed, his jaw clenched. He leaned back against the armrest of the couch with crossed arms, obviously irritated. Stiles reached forward onto the coffee table, exchanging the empty paper bag for the full container of soup. He paused before opening the lid.

“ . . . Scotty said the vibes over there were triggering his spidey-senses.” Stiles admitted, immediately taking in a large mouthful of soup to avoid follow-up questions. Splashes of yellow spilled onto his shirt in his haste. Derek did  _ not  _ look happy with Stiles’ answer. He opened his mouth, no doubt to reply with a scathing remark about Stiles’ word-choice, but before he could say anything Stiles let out an absolutely obscene moan.

“Holy fuck, what did you put in this soup?” Stiles groaned, setting the spoon to the side and taking a big drink straight from the container. Derek stared at him, whatever he’d been about to say completely forgotten. Stiles set the soup down, holding it in his lap with both hands. “You’re looking at me weird. What’s wrong? It’s good soup, man. Healing soup. You’re a good soup-maker. You can . . . come on, are you seriously not gonna let go of this Kelpie thing?”

“Don’t do it again.” Derek said shortly, glaring intensely at the set of coasters stacked on the coffee table. Stiles’ eyes went wide, shocked he’d gotten off so easy. He’d been expecting a longer lecture, at least. Then Derek reached down into the couch and pried the TV remote out from between the cushions. Derek tossed the remote into Stiles’ lap, weirdly avoiding eye-contact.

“You found it!” Stiles beamed, thrilled. Derek, whose shoulders had gone oddly tense a moment ago, seemed to relax slightly.

“Did you even look?” He asked dryly. Stiles barked out a laugh. It cut out halfway through, hoarse and wheezing.

“Why look when you’ve been trained to fetch?” Stiles turned on the TV, the screen coming to live in the middle of a  _ Family Feud _ rerun. Stiles punched the air. “Yes!”

“I . . . Stiles?” Derek managed. Stiles looked over at him, smiling.

“Yeah?”   


“For the record,” Derek paused, hesitant, “I’m here because I care. About the pack. And you’re part of the pack. You're my . . . I want to take care of you. That’s why I’m here.”

“Oh.” Stiles looked down, his cheeks flushing with color. “Cool.”

“I’m also here because without me, you wouldn’t have to watch these shitty game shows with you.” Derek threw in, uncrossing his arms and moving a bit closer. Stiles snorted.

“Uh, excuse you Der-Bear.  _ Family Feud _ is a masterpiece.”

“Eat your soup, Stiles.”

“If a squash is a fruit, isn’t this a smoothie?”

“ . . . shut up and eat your food.”


End file.
